A white Volkswagen Beetle retains signs of having been submerged by the receded waters that flooded the basement carpark of Tessarina condominium off Wilby Road. -- ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
THURSDAY'S deluge which submerged parts of Bukit Timah was a 'freak' event that occurs once in 50 years, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim said on Friday.
'What happened was very unusual,' he said. 'The intensity was tremendous.'
Shortly after 1pm the skies opened and in the next two hours, almost 110mm of rain fell - almost half the average monthly rainfall for November.
When a diversion canal from the main Bukit Timah canal burst its banks, flood waters rose knee-high, partially submerging ground-floor buildings and cars and causing untold damage.
'We knew the diversion canal was not big enough to take this,' the minister said about the three decade-old canal which stretches more than 3km, from Sixth Avenue to Sungei Ulu Pandan.
It was built in 1972 as part of the Bukit Timah Flood Alleviation Scheme, a major government project aimed at diverting water away from Bukit Timah - a low-lying area with a history of flooding stretching back to the 1930s.
Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.
